Chapter 62
T he mortal stands before me, staring.
It’s only when my baby wriggles at my chest that my senses return to myself. I peer down upon the child and marvel at how my heart goes out to him.
But there is nothing resembling shadows within this boy. Nothing resembling a Fate. His face belongs to his father, his eyes to a mother who no longer exists.
Swallowing the agonizing lump in my throat, I offer the child to his father.
At first, the man simply stares at me.
“He’s your son,” he says, almost sounding hurt.
“Only as a technicality,” I say. “The essence of his mother is no longer with us.”
The mortal man winces, but this time when I go to hand the wriggling child over, the man takes him.
There’s an oddity about the mortal’s movement.
At first, he holds the boy out, grasping him underneath the back of his head and supporting his buttocks on his wrist, so as to not harm the boy with his hook.
When the baby flails, sensing his own unsteadiness, I place my hands on the mortal’s wrists.
He tenses under my touch, and my breath catches at his warmth, the feel of his sun-weathered skin.
He feels like he does in my memories—the girl’s memories.
My black heart races within me, and I count myself lucky that I have no visible skin to flush, my shadows acting as a mask.
I guide the infant in his arms, nudging the child close to his chest. The baby settles in, calming to his father’s breathing.
My heart pricks, but this baby is not mine. This husband is not mine.
The mortal glances at me, and at first, he looks as if he is about to say something, but then his gaze catches on something glinting on the ground. He squats down, baby still at his chest, and plucks the adamant pocket watch from the earth.
“You cannot imprison me with that,” I say. “If you’re hoping to take my shadows, it will not work.”
“Yes,” he says. “I know. Not unless it’s your choice.”
I cock my head to the side, examining the man.
He is beautiful in a way most mortals are not.
I suppose it could have something to do with those fae ears of his.
The fae always were more beautifully crafted than humans, though they suffered for it with their own faults.
Still, there’s something about the sharpness of his edges that catches my eye, like the glint of a blade in sunlight.
Sharp and dangerous, yes, but eye-catching all the same.
I’m used to the Descendants. Their unearthly looks. It was part of my Eldest Sister’s cruelty to make them so beautiful, yet so out of reach for my Middle Sister. But this man surpasses them all.
“Darling,” he says, gazing at me with such intensity it makes me want to squirm under his assessment.
It’s not as though I have encountered many mortals face to face, but I did not expect to feel such authority exuding from one, not when I am a Fate and he is mortal. How this man manages to make me uncomfortable, I am unsure. But this will not be a sensation I suffer for long.
“Take your son and go,” I say. “The two of you are free. My Sister won’t be bothering you any longer.”
“That’s it then?” he says. “You’re leaving us?” There’s accusation in his tone, but not anger. Something else, though. A demanding presence. A challenge, I suppose, he expects me to meet.
“You keep calling me Darling,” I say, “but I know no Wendy Darling. No more than we know the characters we meet in our dreams.”
“Yes, I know,” he says, glancing again at the pocket watch. He flips it around, twirling it on the edge of his hook. The baby presses against his chest. “I know you know no Wendy Darling,” he says, “but I do.”
If I were a mortal, I would bite my lip, perhaps hug my arms around my chest. But I am no mortal, and I am not one to feel shame.
“I know that you loved the woman you thought to be Wendy Darling,” I say, trying my utmost not to glance down at the little boy in his arms, the boy my immortal heart calls out to.
I have no desire for the child to grow up motherless.
But I am no mother. And this man—this beautiful man—will find a mother for this child with ease. I am certain of it.
“I love her still. She is my wife,” says the man.
“Was,” I say, correcting the mortal. “She was your wife. But that woman did not know who she was.”
“No,” says the man. “No, she did not. Not for a long while. But she found herself, eventually. And it was without the help of anyone else. Well, that’s not entirely true,” he adds. “It just wasn’t with the help of me. But a few friends along the way… they helped.”
Something stirs in my heart. Friends. Not a luxury we Fates have been afforded. We remain separate, distinct from mortals. It is a lonely existence, but a necessary one.
“You really don’t remember?” he asks.
I shake my head, but the gesture is deceptive, and I have no wish to deceive this man.
“I remember parts, as one might a dream, the details slipping away from you as soon as you wake. I remember, but the memories are not my own. They are memories of a different reality, no more real to me than a nightmare.”
The beautiful man stares at me, then offers me the faintest of smiles. “Come now, Darling. They can’t all be nightmarish.”
His rogue grin sends me back to a dark hall of a ship, to this man pushing me up against a wall. Promise you won’t kiss me back.
The shadows surrounding me shudder, but I try my best to ignore the warmth bubbling up within me. This is how it happened for my Sisters. How much pain has been endured by so many because a Fate allowed herself to be seduced by a mortal?
“I am sorry you have lost your wife,” I say, my voice clipped. “If it is any comfort to you, from what I remember, she loved you very much.”
The man’s tantalizing smile turns to stone. I wonder if he will hate me—her. If he will perceive this as abandonment. What he does not understand is that Wendy Darling, whoever she was—whoever I was—died. She has no more abandoned him than a wife fallen to a plague.
“If you won’t come back for me,” he says, “then at least come back for your son. Would you let him grow up motherless? Would you force me to tell him the story of the woman who didn’t wish to return to him?”
Pity swells in my heart for the man. Yes, he truly does not understand.
“Your wife is dead,” I say, hating to put it so bluntly, but it is now evident that this is necessary. “Tell your son she died saving him.”
“Would you have me tell him that his mother died, but when given the choice to come back to him, she refused?” says the man. “That is not often a choice the dead get to make. I doubt it will be much comfort to him.”
“He is yours. It is not my business what you do or do not tell him,” I say, turning to go.
The man reaches out to me, his hook grasping at my shoulder, but it glides right through me, barely a buzz of sensation. I do not turn around.
“In your heart you know he is still your son,” says the man, desperate now. “When Peter held him over the fire, you protected him with a ferocity only a mother would. I heard you claim him.”
I pause, unable to contradict that last statement.
But there is no way of explaining to the mortal that no matter how confusing my feelings for the child may be, they do not excuse irrational behavior, pretending I am someone I am not.
“The child is an infant. An innocent. I do not take kindly to those with power using the innocent to their own benefit. The child should not have to hurt. Children should be protected. But you? You will protect this child. I can see it in the way you hold him. In the way you look at him. And if you believe he is in need of a mother, I am sure you will have no difficulty finding one who is eager to fill that position.”
“I don’t want a mother for my child,” says the man. “I want you.”
It’s my instincts that betray me, and I find myself swiveling around to face him.
He truly is beautiful, not just in appearance, but his words, too, every syllable that drips from his mouth a temptation formulated specifically for my lonely heart.
“But I am not her. I am not who you seek. You fell in love with a mortal girl. Don’t you see it? She was never meant to exist.”
“That’s how Wendy used to think, too,” says the man. “That’s what she used to believe.”
“Well, then she was correct,” I say. “She must have had an instinct.”
“Do you know what I think?” says the man. “I think you are afraid.”
Something strange stirs within me. “Afraid? Afraid of what? My Sisters are dispatched. They will not challenge me again.”
“When my wife went to your dwelling place,” he says, “she returned and said it was beautiful but lonely. As if it had only ever been touched by one being. Still, there were baubles all within it. Collections taken from the mortal realm.”
“They were gifts,” I say. “I stole nothing.”
“No, but you collected them all the same, no matter how worthless they would have been to a Fate,” he says.
“And your point?” I ask.
“The two Sisters,” says the man. “They walked among mortals. They befriended them, loved them even, from time to time. But there are no such legends of the Youngest Sister doing so. I think you were afraid, just like she always was. I think you valued yourself so little, valued your companionship as so inferior, you did not believe yourself capable of being loved. Or perhaps you did not believe others were capable of loving you. Of enjoying your company. Of loving your laughter. Of doing anything they could to catch your smile. You didn’t know what others would sacrifice to watch you grow, to watch that beautiful, guilt-stricken face finally know peace.
You believed your company to be worthless.
And so you refused to give anyone else the chance to value it.
You were alone, and convinced yourself you were content that way. ”
“How could you possibly know any of that?” I ask, unable to stop my voice from heightening in pitch.
“Because I know you, Darling,” he says. “Because I watch you. I notice you. I see you. I chart you like I do the stars. You were my wife,” he says.
“You were my wife when you were mortal, and you are my wife now. I do not care which form you have taken. I do not care if what we had seems only a daydream to you, for it was not. It was real. It is real . You are my wife and the mother of my child and the woman I vowed to spend the rest of my life with. And I do not make promises,” he says, his jaw tightening.
“And I will not watch you disappear into the mountains to some lonely little hovel, because you were too afraid to let yourself be loved.”
He stops, wincing. “How many times,” he says, closing his eyes, “will you refuse help because you do not believe those who are offering it are doing so freely?”
I watch the man intently. It is not that I love him. But I can remember her loving him. Still, these feelings are not my own, and I cannot grasp them.
“If I were to come back,” I say, “perhaps I would not be the same. I might not love you. Perhaps you would not love me.”
“Give it time then, Darling. You waited long enough. You and I have learned nothing, if not how to wait.”
There is something about his sincerity. It’s not him that draws me in quite so much, but his words.
No, not his words, but the way they speak to a hole I did not know was there.
It’s as if they’ve filled a leak—or, at the very least, wish to.
A leak I did not realize until now was the cause of the mildew in my soul.
I do not feel for him. But I feel the truth of his words like the sting of an adder.
“Please, Darling,” says the man. “Please come back to us.”
I glance between the man and the child, then make my decision.